Free As The Wind
by HarlequinRaven
Summary: For the first time in his long life as a daiyoukai, Sesshoumaru felt a stab of regret. Minor KaguSess.


**Free As The Wind**

**Summary:** For the first time in his long life as a daiyoukai, Sesshoumaru felt regret. Kagura/Sesshoumaru.

**A/N: **Just a little drabbly/oneshot thing inspired by the fact that I've watched Kagura's death scene about a million times in the last couple of days, and the SlightlyCompassionate!Sesshoumaru moments were too good not to write about.

* * *

"_Are you leaving?"_  
"_Yes… it is enough. I saw you. One… last… time."_

_~O~  
_

"_Sesshoumaru! … Did she suffer?"_  
"_She was smiling."_

_

* * *

_

As he walked away, through the field of blossoming white sakura, Lord Sesshoumaru of the Western Lands stared straight ahead, unwavering golden eyes sternly piercing the air in front of him, as always. Around him, the wind began to throw up feathers into the air. Sesshoumaru heard his hanyou half-brother leading the others away from the site of Kagura's death as the miko, Kagome, sobbed quietly, and the others were respectfully solemn. Once he sensed that they had left, Sesshoumaru stood still among the flowers, and lifted his face to the wind. Slowly, he lifted his remaining hand to his hair and picked out a snow-white feather that had become entangled there with the rousing breeze. Sesshoumaru looked at the soft, fragile thing twitching between his forefinger and thumb. He opened his fingers and let the wind snap up the feather again. He followed its path with his eyes as it sailed away into the sky.

_Kagura, _he thought. _Now you are free._

As if hearing his inner thoughts, the wind seemed to wrap around him, blowing his hair around his face, and he closed his eyes, looking downward. Could it be that this Sesshoumaru feels…?

He glared outward, cutting his thoughts off. _The woman is dead. _There was no point dwelling on events that had passed.

Once again, Sesshoumaru began to cut a path through the white and green, yet the feeling still remained, a memory that was not quite gone yet. Tenseiga pulsed softly beside his hip in response. Sesshoumaru looked down at the sword he had once thought useless.

_Tenseiga feels regret? _

Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes. Swords could not feel. Which meant that this infernal human emotion must be coming from him. Sesshoumaru's pace began to pick up, and he stalked through the flowers a little more harshly than before, crushing them underfoot. _This Sesshoumaru does not sully himself with pitiful human feelings._

"_Is Sesshoumaru sad?"_

The words of Sesshoumaru's mother resounded in his head at that moment, and Sesshoumaru frowned as he remembered. _"You needed to learn the desire to save a loved one, and the sorrow and fear which accompany that loss."_

Sorrow and fear were not present here. Sesshoumaru had barely known the woman. But what was clear, as Sesshoumaru's hand unconsciously rested upon the hilt of Tenseiga, his slender fingers curling around it, was a lingering feeling like a feather brushing gently against skin. It clung to him.

"This Sesshoumaru regrets your death," he said, his voice a brusque whisper, and his stoic expression never wavering.

With that, Sesshoumaru lifted himself up abruptly into the air, and soared away – the field of alabaster flowers rippled with the backwind he created below him. Turning his nose to the air, Sesshoumaru caught the clear, human scent of Rin and began to fly towards it.

He circled above the scent, and it was the the brightly-coloured kimono Sesshoumaru spotted first. Heading towards it, he carved a graceful arc through the air as he came to land. Jaken's greetings, which doubled as grovelling, went right through Sesshoumaru as per usual, but Rin's words rang clear like bells in his ear.

"I am glad Sesshoumaru-sama did not take very long to return," she said, smiling innocently.

Unusually, Sesshoumaru turned to acknowledge her greeting, and spoke quietly and regally in reply.

"This Sesshoumaru believes the wind was on his side today."

* * *

"_I am the wind. The free wind."_


End file.
